On Pork and Camellia

University of the Philippines - Diliman, '162015 Adroit Prize for Poetry: Honorable Mention

as if by cutting the meat you release its flowers –

frail parallel lines leaping through

a cliff & graze at sedimentation

crashing lightweight on plastic chopping

boards – hymn of fracture wings, quiet

pornography of marble pushed into

a grinder – whine & gristle of gunmetal & mechanic

song of pre-germination,see the veins

of a hummingbird’s jaw bulge, nectar sluicing

through its hollow –

behind the knees, softarmpit & elbow

in pulse, stretch marks betrayingripeness

as each tendril claws to form a nest, peppered & salted

& palmed, laid to rest in antiquity

tattooing prisons on flesh, a blooming

to baroque petals of rain, unsalted, as it hits

the murk of flood, hissing, how quick you tookme to heaven

and left me there.

Mariel Alonzo is an undergraduate student at the University of the Philippines - Diliman who used to study Mechanical Engineering. Some of her orphans have found refuge in journals such as Softblow, Toasted Cheese, Tower Journal, Santa Clara Review, blackmail press, and others. She is currently an intern blogger for Voices of Youth, UNICEF.